14 DAY TRIAL // Ultrabooks have always used solid-state drives for storage, with few exceptions, which means that the newest product made by Samsung will have quite the few takers in the world at large.
We are, of course, referring to the newest storage device that Samsung has started mass-producing, which also happens to be the first PCI Express (PCIe) solid-state drive (SSD) for next-generation ultra-slim notebook PCs.
Made in an M.2 form factor (80mm x 22mm / 3.14 x 0.86 inches), it weighs six grams (a ninth of the 54 grams of a SATA-based 2.5 inch SSD).
That makes it smaller and lighter than a DDR3 RAM module (random access memory).
Performance isn't sacrificed though. In fact, the XP941 can read data at 1,400MB/s (megabytes per second). No PCI Express 2.0 drive could ever go above that.
In layman terms, the newcomer can read 100 HD movies, or 500 GB of data, in six minutes, or 10 HD movies at 5 GB in 36 seconds.
That's a seventh of the time it would take a hard drive to do the same thing. Meanwhile, the fastest SATA SSD would take 2.5 times more.
"With the Samsung XP941, we have become the first to provide the highest performance PCIe SSD to global PC makers so that they can launch leading-edge ultra-slim notebook PCs this year," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics.
"Samsung plans to continue timely delivery of the most advanced PCIe SSD solutions with higher density and performance, and support global IT companies providing an extremely robust computing environment to consumers."
Samsung has been shipping the CP941 to PC maker partners since earlier this quarter (Q2 2013), in 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB capacities. The use of 10nm-class NAND Flash chips is a big part of the reason why all this was possible.
Products using the XP941 drive will be up for sale later this year.